--- title: "Replacing Food Fair Tokens With Avalanche Core Wallet" url: https://endomint.com/p/gU_auwgF4RT_szQ2sFO10A/replacing-food-fair-tokens-with-avalanche-core-wallet published: 2023-12-16 updated: 2023-12-16 tags: ["avalanche", "c-chain", "core wallet", "crypto payments", "food fairs", "proposal", "usdc"] --- # Replacing Food Fair Tokens With Avalanche Core Wallet Every food fair solves the same queue twice. The stall is where the food is, so the queue to pay gets pushed out to the gate, where people stand in line to buy tokens with cash or a card. Then you walk in with a pocketful of tokens and a problem: the bowl costs $12.50 and your tokens are worth $3 each. The token system works, and I am not against it. It turns "wait for the card terminal" into "hand over a token", which is why a good food fair can push a few hundred people through a dozen stalls in an afternoon. It also creates work nobody planned for. Sellers make change or turn down a sale. Buyers end up holding tokens they will never spend. At the end of the day, someone counts a box of tokens and converts them into dollars. This is a proposal to replace the token with USDC, settled on Avalanche's C-Chain and paid with [Avalanche Core Wallet](https://core.app), Ava Labs' wallet for Avalanche. ## Pay in USDC instead of tokens Here is what changes at the stall: | | Paper tokens | USDC on the C-Chain | | :-: | :-: | :-: | | Second queue | At the token booth | None | | Exact amount | Whole tokens, then change | Any amount | | At close | Count tokens, convert to cash | Read a balance | | If it is lost | Replaceable at the booth | Lost keys, lost funds | The seller does the same job with less of it. No booth to staff, no tokens to print, no change to make, no box to count at close. The buyer scans one QR code, checks the amount, and sends. The money arrives in about a second. Core Wallet is non-custodial. Your keys stay on your device and nobody else can move your funds, so the seller never holds your money and you never hand over a seed phrase to buy a $6 coffee. ## Why Avalanche, and why the C-Chain Two reasons, one for the seller and one for the buyer. The seller needs a payment that costs almost nothing and settles before the next customer reaches the till. Avalanche finalises transactions in under a second, handles thousands of them per second, and charges a fraction of a dollar for a token transfer. A $6 coffee is not eaten by the fee. The buyer needs something that behaves like the money they already have. The C-Chain is EVM-compatible, so USDC on it is an ordinary token that any compatible wallet can hold. Core Wallet is the friendly way in, not the only way in. Anyone with a wallet that speaks EVM can scan the same QR code and pay the same USDC. ## What the seller does 1. Install [Core Wallet](https://core.app) on a phone or laptop. 2. Create a wallet, or restore one from a seed phrase or private key. Back up the seed phrase and keep it somewhere other than the stall. 3. Switch the network to Avalanche Mainnet, then the chain to the C-Chain. 4. Show the QR code next to your balance. Print it for the stall, put it on a screen, or send it to buyers directly. 5. Take payment in USDC or AVAX. Balances and transactions show up in the wallet. ## What the buyer does 1. Install Core Wallet and create or restore a wallet. 2. Fund the C-Chain address with the USDC you want to spend and a little AVAX for the network fee. Buy it, swap it, or have it sent to you. 3. Scan the seller's QR code, or type the address in. 4. Enter the amount and pick the token. The network fee and slippage are on screen before you confirm. 5. Check the details and press **Send Now**. 6. Watch it settle in the wallet and check the transaction. ## The part that has to be true None of the hard part is Avalanche. It is the queue at the gate that never had a queue before. Nobody buys noodles at a food fair while installing a wallet. There is a queue behind them and a half-charged phone in their hand. So the onboarding has to happen before the gates open, at a table near the entrance where you create a wallet, load a small amount of USDC, and scan one test QR code until it works. Core Wallet has an in-app browser, so that can all happen on the phone they already carry. The AVAX is the detail people forget. Paying in USDC does not pay the network fee, so a buyer needs a second and smaller balance. The onboarding table has to hand out two things and explain why. Sellers still want dollars at the end of the day. They can swap the USDC for cash, or they can accept that they are holding a token now and decide that is part of the deal. The second option is the interesting one, and it is the one that needs convincing. The seed phrase has to be treated like the cash tin. A paper token can be replaced at the booth. A seed phrase cannot, and nobody should be told otherwise. ## A small trial, not a takeover One fair, ten stalls. Open the onboarding table two hours before the gates. Give every stall a printed QR code and a second card with the same address on it. Keep cash at every stall as a fallback, because someone will need it and because you want to know how many people used it. Then measure three things. How long the queue is where the token booth used to be. How many buyers pay without the seller touching anything. And what the sellers would rather have at close, cash or crypto. If the answer at close is cash, the idea is wrong, and the first fair will tell you that.